Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

?A staff or rod with a snake curled? around it.? This is the Rod?of Aesculapius (also called Asklepios), the ancient?mythical god of medicine. ?Asklepios may have been a real person who was?renowned for his gentle remedies and humane treatment of the?mentally ill.?Today, the staff of Aesculapius is a commonly used symbol of medicine.? It is the symbol of the…

A group which sends physicians and other health workers to some of the most destitute and dangerous parts of the world and encourages them not only to care for people, but also to condemn the injustices they encounter. The 1999 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Doctors Without Borders (in French, Medicins Sans Frontieres). The Nobel Committee…

In a medical context, any medical professional with an MD, a PhD, or any other doctoral degree. The term doctor is quite unspecific. A doctor may, for example, be a physician, psychologist, biomedical scientist, dentist, or veterinarian. In a nonmedical context, a professor of history might be addressed as doctor, an eminent theologian might be…

DHA. An essential fatty acid, thought to be important to the development of infants, particularly as regards their eyes and brain. DHA is present in breast milk and has been added to some infant formulas. Postnatal DHA may improve vision and some cognitive functions in infants and toddlers. DHA is an omega-3, polyunsaturated, 22-carbon fatty acid. It is…

Short and informal for doctor. In a medical context, doc may refer to any medical professional with an MD, a PhD, or any other doctoral degree. The word “doctor” comes from the Latin “docere” meaning to teach. A doctor was a teacher, especially a learned or authoritative one.

Date of birth, an abbreviation that is frequently used in medical charting.

On a prescription, Do Not Substitute. If a physician orders a particular drug and writes DNS on the prescription, that tells the pharmacist not to substitute a generic version or any other drug for the prescribed drug.

A virus in which the genetic material is DNA rather than RNA. The DNA may be either double- or single-stranded. Major groups of double-stranded DNA viruses (class I viruses) include the adenoviruses, the herpes viruses, and the poxviruses. Major groups of single-stranded DNA viruses (class II viruses) include the parvoviruses and coliphages.

The production of multiple copies of a sequence of DNA. Repeated copying of a piece of DNA. DNA amplification plays a role in cancer cells. A tumor cell amplifies, or copies, DNA segments as a result of cell signals and sometimes environmental events. Amplification can occur in vivo (in the living individual) or in vitro (literally…

Deoxyribonucleic acid. One of two types of molecules that encode genetic information. (The other is RNA. In humans DNA is the genetic material; RNA is transcribed from it. In some other organisms, RNA is the genetic material and, in reverse fashion, the DNA is transcribed from it.) DNA is a double-stranded molecule held together by…